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The Two Faces of Shame
The Huffington Post: Twenty-four-year-old Shawn Gementera was caught red-handed pilfering letters from private mailboxes along San Francisco's Fulton Street. Mail theft is a serious crime, and it was not Gementera's first run-in with the law. Even so, the judge opted for a lenient sentence -- just two months in jail and three years of supervised release. But the supervised release came with an unusual condition. Gementera's sentence required him to stand in front of a San Francisco post office, wearing a sandwich board with these words in large letters: "I stole mail.
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Sense and Superstition
The New York Times: Superstitious people do all sorts of puzzling things. But it’s not just the superstitious who knock on wood. From time to time, we all rap our knuckles on a nearby table if we happen to let fate-tempting words slip out. “The cancer is in remission, knock on wood,” we might say. In fact, it’s so common we often don’t think about it. But it’s worth asking: why do people who do not believe that knocking on wood has an effect on the world often do it anyway? Because it works. ... That makes sense intuitively. What’s less intuitive is how a simple physical act, like knocking on wood, can alleviate that concern.
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Psst. I Hear That Gossip Is Not All Bad.
The Huffington Post: When I was growing up, there was a woman in the neighborhood known as The Mayor. She was not a mayor in any official sense, and in fact held no political office. She was a busybody and a gossip, and she made it her mission to spread the word on other neighbors' lives -- who got a DUI last night, whose teenage daughter was pregnant, who got fired at the factory and whose car dealership was struggling. Her specialty was scandal-mongering, but truth be told, she usually had her facts right. Gossips have a reputation for being trivial and petty and often meanspirited. But is it possible that such babbling serves some valuable social purpose?
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Do You Really Have Free Will?
Slate: It has become fashionable to say that people have no free will. Many scientists cannot imagine how the idea of free will could be reconciled with the laws of physics and chemistry. Brain researchers say that the brain is just a bunch of nerve cells that fire as a direct result of chemical and electrical events, with no room for free will. Others note that people are unaware of some causes of their behavior, such as unconscious cues or genetic predispositions, and extrapolate to suggest that all behavior may be caused that way, so that conscious choosing is an illusion.
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The science of introverts and the workplace
The Washington Post: In the years since Susan Cain published “Quiet,” several other bestselling business authors have joined her effort to weed from that genre the “extrovert ideal”—the bold, outspoken personality type that many self-help books idolize. That ideal, Cain says, took root in organizations in the 20th century and has since hurt the way we identify leaders, award promotions and even structure our meetings. Cain spoke with Lillian Cunningham, editor of the Post’s On Leadership section, about what it would look like to cultivate the assets that introverts bring to the workplace. ...
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Older Workers Should Think Young
The Wall Street Journal: At age 42, Shona Sabnis is one of the "older" workers in the New York office of public-relations firm Edelman. Though she prides herself on being able to get along with most people, she is sometimes puzzled by the actions of her 20-something co-workers who, in turn, don't understand why the senior vice president of public affairs likes to distribute physical newspaper clippings. While dealing with a situation at the office, Ms. Sabnis was told by a junior co-worker that she should be handling her client differently. It wasn't phrased as a suggestion, which surprised her since she knew the co-worker wasn't that familiar with the account.
